


Escaping The Narrative

by theangelwiththewormstache



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Winchester Loves Castiel, Dean forgets Castiel, Dean is stuck in a loop of bad writing, Episode Fix-It: s15e20 Carry On, M/M, Mutual Pining, TheirLoveWasReal, and now he's in my bad writing lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:13:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29411043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theangelwiththewormstache/pseuds/theangelwiththewormstache
Summary: Dean is stuck in a loop of bad writing that sees his ending as nothing but bloody.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 35
Collections: Their Love Was Real: a Destiel & Saileen Fanworks Challenge





	Escaping The Narrative

**Author's Note:**

> I just thought, what if Chuck was still in control. What if the boys looked so tired in 25x20 because they have lived through those events again and again. So I wrote the beginning part of a fix-it that may become something longer or left forgotten. Only time will tell.

“I just...thinking about Cas.”  _ Cas _ .

Dean winces when something at the back of his mind starts to pound and demands to be set free, but then, just as quickly as it appeared, it went away. Leaving Dean with the right words to respond to Sam’s comments even though he doesn’t remember what his brother said at all. 

“Yeah. Yeah, no. I think about 'em, too.”  _ Lies _ . 

Dean’s words didn’t sound like his, but he continued to talk as if he believed them. They were coming out of his mouth, so they must be real because he was real. He can enjoy his life with or without...wait, what were they talking about?

Dean feels the pie smash into his face before he sees it and everything that was just said was left forgotten as he scooped the pie off his face to eat it while Sam laughed. It was an odd laugh, sort of hollow almost forced, but Dean tried not to think about it because Sam hasn’t been sleeping well. He was going through a lot right now.

Wait, no, he wasn’t. Sam was fine. They’re happy now. 

They fell into a routine again. The hunt felt comfortable enough. A little weird, maybe, but still an easy one. 

He was planning on stopping by the grocery store to make Miracle a little special dinner treat as an apology for leaving her alone as long as he has but then everything happened so quickly, and yet Dean saw it so clearly. He already knew where he was supposed to stand so the vamp can shove him into — He gritted his teeth at the familiar feeling of the rusty bar piercing through his back. 

His arms fell limp to his side for a second as he threw his head back to let out a shaky breath before he saw the deja vu of Sam beheading the vampire in front of him. He saw it so many times already, but this time it was different. He knew what Sam was going to do next. He knew what he was going to say to Sam now. He knew - Dean takes a gasping breath - this is where he was going to die. 

He’s seen it before, lived through it already. 

‘Sam!’ Dean wanted to scream out to his brother, but the words wouldn’t come out. Instead, he had to die now. ‘Sam! Please! Don’t - Don’t let me die.’

But his words didn’t match his screaming thoughts. A tear finally falling as panic was settling inside him because he recognized this feeling of being in his body but lacking control of it. 

‘Please.’ Dean’s eyes closed as his body finally started to feel cold. ‘Please. Somebody. Somebody save me.’

His head falls limp against Sam’s shoulder, and all Dean wanted was to hold his brother again. To tell him that he was okay, but he knew what came next. He knew he had to die for the story to continue. Sam had to mourn him so they could start all over again. So Chuck can get the storybook ending he wants.

-

Dean opens his eyes to the alarm clock ringing, something he doesn’t even remember buying, and quickly turns it off to sit up and stretch. His arms were already open to receive a welcoming hug from his little pup, but she never came.

He whistled for her, but the familiar running never came. Instead, Sam popped his head into Dean’s room.

“Dude, why are you whistling for me?”

“I’m not. Miracle wasn’t here when I woke up. She with you?” Dean started to get out of bed, his feet already in his familiar slippers, the one thing that was always consistent in his life, before looking up to meet Sam’s confused expression. “What?”

“You okay?”

Dean thought about the question for a second before he shrugged. “Yeah. Why?”

“You must have had one hell of a dream then cause I have no clue what you’re talking about. Who’s  _ she  _ again?”

Dean tried to read his brother’s expression for any hint of a joke, but he was serious. “She’s…” Wait. Dean can’t even remember who she was. A pet, right? A cat, maybe? No. No, that doesn’t sound right. He’s allergic. A small flaw in his hero's good luck magic that never bothered him before but now, thinking about it, it made no sense. 

Dean shrugged as he closed his robe shut. “Shit, I don’t know. Must have been some dream.”

Sam raised a concerned eyebrow at him but didn’t say anything else about it. Instead, he reminded him that breakfast was ready and they needed to get ready for a hunt before he left the room. 

Dean followed after him, but then his foot kicked something cold on the floor. He looked down to see two dog bowls, and his world went spinning before it went dark. 

Continuity errors.

-

“Cas helped.”  _ Cas _ .

“Dean!” Dean looked around as he heard the familiar voice call his name. He knows this voice! He knows it so well, and he misses it. “Dean! Dean, you gotta fight this!”

“Cas?” His name finally escaped his lips in a heavy breath. Feeling as if somebody just punched the air right out of his lungs. He was ready to stand, but Bobby pulled him back down on his seat, a tight smile tugging on his lips. “Bobby?”

Dean opened his mouth to ask for him, but it felt like somebody has stolen his voice while Bobby continued talking before motioning for Dean to take a sip of the beer he was given and made a face at the familiar taste. 

“Oh wow. Taste like the first drink I ever shared with my dad.”

“Quality stuff?”

Dean shook his head as he held the beer away from him, examining it. “No, it’s crap.” 

Dean didn’t mention it was because he was still a kid when it happened. A drunk John shoved a beer into his grasp, saying that if he was old enough to hold a gun, then he was old enough to drink. He didn’t think he was old enough for either. 

“But it was fantastic.” Dean could hear the bitterness in his tone, but if Bobby did too, he pretends not to. 

“Just like this.” He motions out into the dirt, nothings that were supposed to mean something but Dean only felt just as empty as the road looked. 

“It’s almost perfect.” 

“He’ll be along.” Bobby reassured him, and Dean had to look at him again because he wasn’t sure who he meant. There was somebody….someone was missing. They’re constantly missing, and Dean can’t fucking get to them. 

Them. Him. Him. Him.  _ Blue _ . He has blue eyes.

“Go for a drive, Dean.” He heard Bobby firmly tell him; the warmth in his voice was gone. It wasn’t even the familiar teasing tiredness that Bobby usually talked to him with. No. This time it was hard. Impatient that Dean wasn’t doing what he was supposed to be doing.

“Um,” Dean set the beer down and stood up as he looked over towards his Baby that appeared in front of them. Waiting for him. “I think I’ll go for a drive?”

“Have fun.”

Dean didn’t look back at Bobby when he walked towards his Baby but, somehow, he knew that if he did look back, Bobby wouldn’t be there because Bobby messed up. He mentioned someone that wasn’t part of the story anymore. Someone Dean keeps wanting to remember, but the harder he tried, the more his head felt like it was going to explode.

So he followed his body’s lead. He needed to be driving right now, and he can already feel the tight grip of the wheel in his hands. There was somewhere he had to be. Someone he had to see. 

He knew already where he had to go. All he had to do was follow the dirt road until he made it to the main shiny black asphalt at the end. Then he had to turn left. 

It was like an instinct, an itch in his body telling him to go. Go. GO! But as soon as Dean made it to the main road, he slammed on the breaks. His fingers tightening on the wheel as his breath shakes because stopping felt wrong, like putting a metal spoon in the microwave kind of wrong. And right now, Dean felt like the damn microwave as his brain pounded in his head, screaming at him to do what he was meant to do, but he can’t do that again. 

He knows what’s going to happen if he turns left! 

“Dean!” He hears that voice again, and this time Dean looks at the empty road on his right. It’s unknown. “Dean! Fight it! Come on! You gotta fight it!”

_ Fight it. _ Dean starts to put his foot down on the gas again as he slowly forces his body to move where he wanted to go and not where he needed to go. But the pain was distracting him too much, making his vision blurry, and his head felt like a ripe melon on the sun. 

His hands turn the wheel, and he ends up going left, just like he was meant to. His jaw clenched while he tried to hold back tears because he knows now, maybe he has always known, that he was only there to follow an unknown script. He wasn’t free. No. He was far from it. 

He was trapped, trapped in a loop to find the perfect ending for his story.

Wake up. Miracle is there. Make bed. Breakfast. Look for a case. Eat pie. Hunt. Die. Turn left. Reunite with Sam. Wake up. Miracle is not there. Shower. Breakfast. Look for a case. Eat a good roadside burger. Hunt. Die. Turn left. Reunite with Sam. Wake up. Cas is never there. 

Cas.

_ Cas _ .

“Turn around!”

Dean doesn’t hesitate to listen to that voice, Cas’s voice he finally recognizes again, as he burns tire marks into the road when he makes a complete 180 before speeding off in the opposite direction.

He will not be trapped. Not again!

Dean let out agonizing screams as he drove because the ringing in his head only became more deafening. There was warm sticky blood sliding down the side of his face, but he kept going, kept blinking through the white spots in his vision. He was going to break out of this narrative or finally, please finally, die trying. 

A blinding white light flashed in front of him, but it was too late to stop, so all Dean did was cover his eyes with his forearm and hope to at least see  _ him  _ one last time. 

Dean gasps as his body goes through the white light. He can feel the familiar tingle of grace warm up his body, healing him so profoundly that Dean falls limp against his steering wheel. Heavy breaths rise and fall from his chest when he finally feels the puppet strings snap. 

He was himself again. He was free from being just a damn character in a poorly written story. He escaped that narrative time and time again but now, fuck  _ now _ ; he knows he has finally done it because everything he has forgotten, or better yet forced to forget, was now front and center in his mind.

Jack. Eileen. Donna.  _ Cas _ . 

His family. He forgot all about them while being forced to die at a stake for Chuck’s entertainment. He was repeatedly dying because that was his ending in this story. Someone who was supposed to die bloody. But not anymore. 

Dean will live.

He would fight, and he would get his family back. 

“Drive!” He heard Cas’s voice again.

Dean didn’t hesitate for a second as he sits back up and presses down on the pedal. He hasn’t turned right before, but he knew he wasn’t alone in this.

“I’m here, Dean.” He hears again, and Dean relaxes. 

“I miss you.” He says to the air, and for a second, he thinks this is all a one-way communication, but then he feels that warmth again before he hears Cas’s voice.

“I miss you too.”


End file.
